


Giltran

by sufficientlyinteresting



Series: Giltran [1]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Arrogance, Chaos, Clones, Dark Mechanicus, Gen, Heretek, My First Fanfic, Origin Story, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-09 14:50:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17408942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sufficientlyinteresting/pseuds/sufficientlyinteresting
Summary: In which Heretek Archmagos Giltran tells the story of the day of he became truly insufferable (more so than before I mean, he was always a bit like that)





	1. In which Archmagos Giltran starts off as he always does; with way too much pseudo-philosophical wonk

It never rains on Hellforge Vrykul. That simple and physical fact isn’t particularly remarkable, even among worlds in realspace. But it was the thing that most often struck me about the place, no matter how much time I spent on its chaotic surface. After a few thousand years you start to miss the little things.

I distinctly recall watching the sunrise on the day that my second life began. I had made it a habit to climb to the roof of my hab block in the morning, and watch the light creep across the hard edges of the industrial landscape. No two sunrises are the same on a Daemon World. The sheer malleability of reality in such places allows (or perhaps demands) that the sight, once beheld, is never repeated. There is poetry in that, I think.

On the morning in question, the dawn had a turquoise tinge to it, and the illumination flowed across the rugged transport lanes of the Hellforge more like liquid than light, as though the speed of light itself was perceptibly lower than normal (insofar as the concept of normality can be applied to a place so steeped in the forces of the Warp). I abandoned superstition long ago, but I took the sight as a reminder that the realms of possibility are only bounded where we are willing to accept boundaries.

Back then, anyone would have told you that I, as I am now, am an impossibility. In fact, some people still insist that I am, as if I am undertaking an elaborate ruse for no greater purpose than my own aggrandizement. But I am not impossible.

I am proof that  _anything_  is possible.


	2. In which the Archmagos crosses the street, and is his normal jerk self

Common wisdom dictates that a story should start at the beginning. This is, of course, utter nonsense. If you trust common wisdom, then you will always fall to common misunderstanding. The beginning of a story is a subjective matter, and the choice of where to begin ultimately provides the framing for the rest of the tale.

For example, I have chosen to begin this story on the day of my first expansion. Prior to that point in my life I had accomplished much, and the records of those feats are detailed elsewhere. This is not the beginning of my story. But given the effect it has had on the rest of my life to date, it is nonetheless the perfect place to start.

I stepped outside to walk the short distance between my hab and the workshop. The greenish morning light bathed the streets, and stepping upon the ferrocrete sent distortions rippling away from my shoes. Bemused, I crouched down for a closer examination. At the touch of my hand, it again rippled like water and felt wet to the touch, though it left absolutely no residue on my fingers. Repeating this experiment in the shade of a nearby vehicle produced no such effect. Seemingly, the morning light was indeed liquid, at least where it touched upon ferrocrete. Such are the delights of life upon a Daemon World.

The workshop was another large and blocky structure, much as the same as any that can be found on Vrykul. It is not a decorative place, but aesthetics were not a factor considered in the design of the sprawling industrial sectors covering it’s surface. The buildings of the Hellforge are supremely functional, and there is inherent beauty in that.

Stepping through the open doorway, I doffed my greatcoat and tossed it to the floor beside me. Mere moments later, a nurgling wiggled its way out of an improbably small hole in the workshop floor and waddled over.

“You know I hate it when you do that,” it said, it’s angry facade quite ruined by the small smirk it couldn’t quite suppress. It’s voice had an odd quality to it that I can only describe as nasal, though that isn’t quite correct. It was as if its vocal chords were coated in phlegm- which was almost certainly precisely the case.

“Yes, I do. Good morning, Squelch.” I replied, also trying to keep a grin off my face.

Squelch turned from me to the coat with a loud “Harrumph!”, and began gathering it up for storage.

Squelch is an odd little thing. It is the only nurgling I have ever met that insists that things that things be tidy. Not clean, mind – that would run directly counter to its nature – but tidy. This exchange was something of a ritual for us, established over long centuries. Now that the pleasantries were out of the way, I could get it work.

“Anything abnormal overnight, Squelch?” I asked over my shoulder as I strode over to a large glass tank in the corner of the room. It ignored me, busy with the coat. So be it. I peered into tank, the liquid and figure within lit from above.

I studied myself, suspended in the liquid within the tank.


	3. In which the Archmagos rambles a bit about cloning, and checks his work

If you have the right tools, cloning isn’t difficult. You take some genetic material, use it to create a single cell, put that cell in the right environment, give it a little push and the rest more or less takes care of itself. Wait eighteen or so years, and you have an adult human body that is an exact genetic match for it’s source material.

The catch is thus; a basic clone is a useless sack of flesh, barely even fit for spare parts. No mind, no muscle tone, and the whole process is so dreadfully slow. The latter two issues are effectively solved problems – the technologies for stimulating muscle growth in lieu of exercise and speeding the growth of tissue have been mature for millennia. But the mind is trickier.

A clone that is…unformatted, for lack of a better term, has basic autonomic functions only. It’s heart will beat, it will breathe, etc, but naught else. The firmware of humanity comes pre-installed, but hardware with no controlling software cannot perform tasks. The installation of simple software leads to single purpose servitors, the likes of which the False Mechanicus of the Imperium of Man creates in dizzying numbers. But a sentient mind is infinitely more complex, and provides a challenge even for the greatest adepts of the Arts Biologica.

Biologica has never been an area of interest to me, but let me simply say that the process of implanting mind and memory did not prove a barrier to my work. The less I say about this the better, as there is one particular rogue Apothecary who would be  _very_ cross to learn that his methodology isn’t as secret as he believes.

I turned away from the tank containing my fully grown clone and consulted the cogitator standing beside it. Logging data from the implantation process scrolled down the display, which I scanned rapidly before reaching the end of the feed. Dated mere hours ago, the message I had been awaiting stood starkly in bright green text. I could practically feel the smugness of the cogitator’s Machine Spirit as I read it;

++++IMPLANTATION OF MEMORY ENGRAMS COMPLETE. ESTIMATED FIDELITY: 98.3%. ALL UNIT TESTS PASSED, WAKE-UP SIMULATIONS GREEN.++++

I smiled at the sight. Implanting memories is a slow process, and I have many thousands of years of memories, so this copy of my own mind and body had taken many weeks to create. It was in itself an achievement the likes of which very few men in the galaxy can boast. But it was merely a precursor, a lengthy preparation to provide optimal conditions for the final implementation of a thousand years of work.

It was time for me to make history.


	4. In which Archmagos Giltran makes history (or something, I sorta stopped listening for a little bit there)

There are many theories of history, but most contemporary theories are utter garbage. There is only one motive force in the galaxy; willpower. It is great men who make history. Great men, who win great victories, and live to tell the story their conquests thereafter. Men with the courage, skill and power to change the galaxy as they see fit.

Men like me.

I absentmindedly toyed with the augmetic implant on the back of my head while I reviewed the implantation logs in detail. The augmentic was not new, though it had been dormant thus far. I had implanted it many years ago, as soon as I had finalized the technical details of how it would communicate with its counterparts. In fact, it is now several iterations out of date, but it is attached directly to my brain stem- replacing it represents an unacceptable risk. Cruelly, my haste means that if I ever need to voluntarily remove units, my original body is the most logical choice for disposal.

Once upon a time, I suspected that my impatience would be the death of me. I harbour no such fears now.

“Hows it lookin’?” asked Squelch, waddling up behind me, the coat evidently dealt with.

“Ideal, or very nearly. Today is the day, I think. Unless there’s anything coming up I need to consider?” I asked, not looking away from the cogitator’s display.

“Hmm.” Squelch paused for a moment, no doubt in silent communion with the rest of its plague. “Nothing today, but Prime Fabricator Lokum is probably gonna show up some time next week.”

I snorted loudly at this. Lokum was a prick, and one of my biggest detractors on Vrykul. Unfortunately, he was the ultimate authority on the Hellforge, so I couldn’t just ignore him. Squelch was right, he was due for one of his ‘surprise’ visits.

“No doubt he intends to harangue me about ‘neglect of my manufactorum duties’ again. Won’t he be in for a surprise when he finds himself outnumbered in the meeting?”

At this point, I saw no more reason for delay. I tapped a few keys on the cogitator’s interface, initiating the awakening procedure for my cloned self.

Within the tank, I opened my eyes.


	5. In which Archmagos Giltran becomes Archmagi Giltran

The first moments of consciousness for a new clone are not at all like you might imagine. It is not like waking up, not even from a dreamless sleep. Even a sleeping mind is active – not conscious, but undergoing all manner of routine biological maintenance. The first moments of a clone’s life are not the gentle rise of awareness as mental activity gradually changes from a subconscious to conscious state. There is nothing slow about it. One moment you don’t exist, and the next moment you do.

Needless to stay, this is very Omnissiah-damned startling.

In the tank, I opened my eyes, and my mind was racing a light year per minute. Subsequently I’ve come to recognize this feeling, but as the old saying goes, there is nothing like your first time. There was no confusion. Understanding dawned on me immediately. The last thing I remembered was undergoing to full mental scan, retrieving and storing my memories in preparation for this day. Now, I was suspended in a tank of liquid looking at my own face, slightly warped by the curved glass. I am a genius, but it does not take genius to draw the obvious conclusion.

I am a clone. This is the first moment of my life.

There are a lot of things I could have felt. Fear is probable. Potentially, feelings of shame or disgust at not being the True version of myself might have manifested. But nothing did. I felt nothing. This was very deliberate, of course. There is a whole range of mental trauma that could occur to a nascent consciousness taken quite literally from 0 to 100 percent activity in the space of moments, if it were allowed. This is why the wake-up procedure includes a powerful cocktail of emotion suppressing drugs. I felt nothing, because it wasn’t possible. I was a being of pure reason in those seconds. I’d have been euphoric, if that hadn’t also been suppressed.

I saw myself smile, the glass modifying the expression into something vaguely horrific. He turned from me and moved to the cogitator beside the tank, issuing a command to the Machine Spirit within.

Suddenly, the mental scan was not the last thing I remembered. In one moment I did not know how long had passed since my memories had been captured, but in the next moment I did. It had been forty-two weeks since the memories I possessed had been captured, and the memories of those weeks came flooding into my awareness. I didn’t remember them actively. I did not drown in memories like some overwrought milksop. I could sense my internal timeline shifting, and when I tried to recall the memories around the disturbance, they were there, as real as if I had lived them myself. I knew that I had not – there was some intrinsic quality to them that told me that I had not truly experienced them first-hand – but they were still my memories, and I imagined that I could feel my mentality changing to take the new information into account.

After a few seconds, the rate of memory transfer slowed dramatically to what I soon realized was real-time. I saw myself outside the tank, looking at myself in the tank, and remembered the emotions of triumph he was feeling just fractions of a second after he felt them. I could feel them too, as the acute but short-lived emotional suppressant was wearing off.

Outside the tank, Archmagos Giltran spoke. I couldn’t hear him as more than a faint murmur, but the memories of thinking the words and speaking them aloud became available to me immediately. It was not a surprise - after all, it is exactly what I would have said if I was standing on the other side of the glass. I am Archmagos Giltran. Increasing the chance of a successful integration wasn’t the only reason I had opted to clone myself so thoroughly and completely for the initial expansion of myself. I had a plan for me, and thinking of it made me smile.

“How would you like to pilot a Knight?”


End file.
